


Teen Wolf, Season 2, Episode 3, Ice Pick

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s02e03 Ice Pick, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 02, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 00:19:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16148615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.





	Teen Wolf, Season 2, Episode 3, Ice Pick

At a gas station, there’s lightning. Allison pulls up, and a man abducts her.

This is a horribly uncomfortable scene.

The next one has Allison and Chris tied and bound in the Hale house. A voice implies hunters must commit suicide if bitten and that Chris would kill her if she was. I’ve read this was an audio flashback of Derek talking, but for some reason, I always thought this was a recorded speech Chris himself had set up to play.

Then, breaking free, he reveals he set this up. He’s going to start training her to be a hunter.

She brings up Isaac, and whether he realises it or not, he sort of throws Victoria under the bus. Claiming what happened with the deputy was under her orders, he says the Argents are matricidal.

Giving her an arrow, he kisses her head, orders a nearby hunter to start timing her, and leaves.

I do think this is accurate, but given what happens with Victoria later in the episode, Chris is still in the convenience store/sleeping.

Chris loves his daughter, but he was abused by Gerard without ever realising it. Until Gerard showed back up, he did okay. As much as I disagree with some of his parenting decisions, he wasn’t a bad father. He wasn’t abusive.

Now, he wants to discourage Allison from further getting entangled in the supernatural world, and if the discouragement doesn’t work, he genuinely wants to have her prepared and able to handle herself.

Yet, he uses abusive tactics.

He tries to make her afraid of other people and of being alone. He physically isolates and uses sleep-deprivation on her. He makes it clear he can always find her, and if he wants to, he can have her disappeared. He makes it clear he can and will use physical pain against and restraints on her.

In a way, despite him intending this to be discouragement, he backs her into a corner and potentially makes her feel as if she can’t refuse. If she says no, what makes her think he or Victoria is going to respect this? Her grandfather and mother work at her school, and there’s, at least, one hunter on the police force. Who can she tell that her family is literally tying her up and gagging her that would both believe her and have the power to get her to safety? The only option is to play along until she’s powerful enough to escape on her own.

He might not want to admit it, but he knew a teenage girl being kidnapped would likely have the fear of rape on her mind. To further this, he brought her to the place she literally saw her aunt being killed. He brought her to the house of the werewolf her aunt hurt when said werewolf was younger than he was.

Here, in regards to Victoria, he even makes his wife, her mother, look worse so that both, hopefully, her anger and fear will be less directed towards him and to try to protect her from Gerard.

If Gerard sees the opposite of Kate but not the image of who Chris used to be, Chris might be able to dissuade Gerard's interest in her as a potential successor. I'm not sure if Gerard knows she knows about the supernatural yet or not, but Chris doesn't want her confronting Gerard with her empathy or her strong, righteous anger. He was too empathetic, and Kate was just as strong and angry as Gerard himself was.

Victoria likely agreed Isaac needed to be tested/brought to their basement (that would have gone well), but Gerard is now running the show. Victoria defers to him out of respect for both his seniority and grief as well as having a genuine fondness for him. Chris does, because, as I’ll go into more with later reviews, there are a lot parallels between Chris and Isaac. Chris is a follower who aligns himself with the strongest person, though, he does have a more rigid moral outlook than Isaac does.

Following Victoria got him away from Gerard, but now, Gerard is back.

Taking a moment to stave away her tears, Allison starts using the arrow to cut through the ropes.

Later, she goes outside, and the hunting buddy congratulates her. She points out it took her two and half hours.

As much as I don’t like this character, his actor does deserve props for the line delivery of, “It took me three when I did it.”

Smiling, she drives away.

Chris leaving isn’t out-of-character, but he’s damn lucky this adult man actually isn’t someone who’d tried to hurt a teenage girl who he himself has just shown will accept abuse. Sure, it’s possible Chris picked a gay/asexual man who is constantly showing off pictures of his baby sister/goddaughter and was all, ‘There’s nothing specifically in the code saying I can’t have a strongly worded conversation, possibly involving hanging him from his foot during it, with that boy on the playground who made her cry,’ but with nothing overtly personal known about this man, all the audience sees is: Chris left his bound, teenage daughter with an adult man who was cool with her being kidnapped in the first place around.

Once she’s gone, before he can get on his motorcycle, K-Jackson tail grabs his feet. His neck is slashed, and when he gets up, he quickly finds himself paralysed.

Claws dripping with venom are shown, and then, it’s onto the credits.

The next day, Allison and Scott rock climb in gym class, and Reed is good at doing subtly sleep-deprived. When he uses his werewolf skill, she cutely kicks him down.

When he lands on the mat, Coach comments, “McCall, I don’t know why, but your pain gives me a special kind of joy.”

Next up is Erica Reyes and Stiles.

Makeup did a great job on Gage Golightly. Erica is incredibly sickly-looking, and her hair is beyond wavy/curly into a straight-up tangled mess.

Stiles gets up and down without any problems, but starting to shake, Erica tries not to cry. Coach isn’t sure what to do, and he’s louder than he should be, but his tone isn’t angry. Lydia casually declares Erica is just freaking out, and Allison reminds him Erica is epileptic.

I don’t blame Allison for not thinking to pull himself a remind him of this a minute ago, but Lydia takes me beyond my usual irritation at s1-2 her into outright anger.

Coach manages to get Erica safely down, but he does nothing about everyone laughing at her.

Later, Erica’s all alone in the gym. Pulling her hair back, she prepares to climb the wall with no rope and no safety mat. Even before she became a werewolf, Erica believed in going hard or going home, and despite everyone believing she should do the latter, she refused.

In the boy’s locker room, Coach says, if anyone sees Isaac, they should tell the principal, a teacher, or call him. Unless the person is Greenberg, in which case, “You shouldn’t even have my number.”

Back in the gym, Erica is climbing the wall.

In the locker room, Stiles refuses to let Scott back out of the plans they’ve made for the night, and Scott’s hand starts to shake.

Erica has a seizure, and Scott’s there to catch her. Allison has Scott put Erica on her side, and when he does, she instinctively grabs his hand to hold.

At the hospital, Erica and Melissa have a sweet scene. It’s implied Erica hasn’t been taking her medication, and Melissa makes her feel at ease even as she makes it clear she’ll need to tell Erica’s mother.

Melissa leaves, Erica closes her eyes, and then, person of interest Derek begins just wheeling the cot around.

Even with Melissa, this hospital needs a serious overhaul in things such as patient safety.

Opening her eyes, Erica starts to lean her head back to see who’s wheeling her, but placing a hand on her head, he orders, “Lie still.”

Into the morgue they go. I don’t know if this is deliberate foreshadowing or not, but it’s harsh to watch. Part of Erica’s death was due to Golightly leaving, but was Erica always meant to die and this just made it happen sooner and maybe differently?

Ignoring Erica’s terror at being alone in a room with an unknown adult who just kidnapped her, Derek makes her feel even worse about her medication and how badly the seizures affect her. Then, in an extremely uncomfortable move, he pulls her close to him. He seductively promises he can make everything better.

Again, this is one area where I’m not sure if unreliable narration is in play or not. Erica’s dead, and if Alec talked to Derek, Derek might agree with certain things he knows to be untrue due to an agreement between him, Scott, Chris, and possibly the others.

Derek does use his sexuality as a tool. He doesn’t do anything anywhere near as bad as what Kate did, but it could be said he uses to manipulate people. Later episodes show he has no sexual interest in Erica and is irritated at hers in him. This doesn’t mean he’d be above using it.

He knows the bite could kill this already sick girl, and yet, here, he says with certainty it will make her better. Even after Jackson’s body rejected the bite, he went moved onto another teenager, Isaac.

It’s possible, after she said yes, he backtracked a little and admitted there was a chance it could kill her, but the audience isn’t shown that.

Derek is in-character, but this scene is so discomforting, I’m wondering if Scott didn’t intentionally paint him and his actions in the worst light as possible.

In biology, there’s a video playing on vaccines, and neither Jackson or Matt is paying attention. Matt gripes about his camera lens being cracked, and hearing “immunity”, Jackson pays attention to the video. He gets the idea bitten, non-werewolf Lydia has made him immune, too.

After class, his reaction to this is idea to physically grab her in the hallway, and then, try to see her side.

If this is a sign of Matt’s influence and/or Peter’s psychological torture, okay, but otherwise, I’m calling nope to this scene. Jackson isn’t a physically violent person, and I’m not buying he’d try to lift a girl’s dress up in the middle of the school hallway. He and Lydia both alluded to their sex life without the other’s knowledge or consent, he’s flirted with Allison in order to strike at Scott, and he’s said sexually explicit things about her, but he’s never shown to push for sex or sexually touch anyone without their consent.

In season 6, Jackson does fight back against hunters, but fighting back isn’t the same as attacking.

Now, Matt, on the other hand, does show sexually aggressive behaviour that crosses the line into assault later on. He shows entitlement to Allison, and this could be translating into Jackson having a right to do this to his ex-girlfriend. Likewise, Peter having the person she loves and craves terrifying her with his touch, insulting her, and yelling she ruins everything is right up his wheelhouse.

Adding to this likely didn’t happen like this, no one in the hallway pays any attention to either of them.

In the next scene, Lydia is crying in the toilets. Someone comes in, and she sees dirty/burnt male feet. She follows, and I don’t know if this was Bohen, but it wasn’t the show did a good job of finding a stunt double who looked like him from the back and side.

When Peter disappears, she finds herself looking at an awards case. Peter Hale was Captain at one point.

Remembering him on the field, she cries some more.

In the lunch room, Vernon Boyd is introduced, and I’ve always gotten the impression, in regards to Stiles, Boyd is somewhat like Danny. Stiles gives every indication of liking him, but Boyd is just, ‘Nope, I’m going to limit my involvement with this annoying kid as much possible.’

I’m not sure how much Scott ever knew about Boyd. He could have made some of things up to fill in the blanks.

Boyd wanting to sit with someone at lunch is a simplistic reduction of why Boyd accepted the bite. He might have been genuinely lonely and unable to properly socialise with people who didn’t annoy him, but this isn’t really shown.

Here, Stiles has gotten the keys for the ice rink Boyd works at, and they argue over the price.

Was Boyd always doomed, too? He works at a place full of water. Frozen, but still water.

On a different not, it’s not clear if Boyd, Erica, and Isaac knew one another or even of one another before they got the bite, but the Boyd/Erica shipper in me likes to imagine Derek saw Boyd showing interest in Erica and was like, ‘Okay. He’s a nice boy around her age. I’ll see if I can get him, too.’ Then, ‘Hey, Erica, first assignment. Do you know this Vernon Boyd kid who goes to school with you? Well, after we’re done shopping and getting your hair and makeup done, you’re going to specifically make sure he sees you, and pay close attention to his reactions, okay?’

Speaking of, once Stiles gets the keys, Erica comes in with her new makeover. She steals an apple, and once everyone has checked her out, she leaves.

I doubt this happened. I do think Erica was running around enjoying the attention she was getting, but this scene was unrealistic on several different levels.

Scott and Stiles follow her out, and she gets into Derek’s car.

It’s supposed to be all dramatic and cast Derek as a bad boy type, but I find it amusing to imagine, as soon as he pulls away, him going, ‘Okay, is her seatbelt on? Good,’ and being all, ‘No, I don’t care if the light just turned yellow, I’m not going until it turns back to green.’

Over at the clinic, Scott drops a light, and he picks up the glass with his bare hands. Werewolf healing or not, this isn’t a good thing to do.

He and Deaton have what seems like a nice moment, but given how shady meta has proven Deaton is, I’m not sure if it is under the surface or not. Basically, Scott is stressed about how everything is falling apart, and Deaton advises it to look at things as simply changing. For better or worse is yet to be seen, but change itself is a natural part of life. Just wait and see how things actually are heading instead of deciding right away that everything’s heading in a bad direction.

Then, Scott tries to broach the subject of the supernatural, and Deaton’s like, ‘How ‘bout a raise instead?’

Scott accepts.

At the Argent house, Allison is wearing stripes due to Gerard invading her home, and in her room, she and Lydia are laughing. Chris appears, and he gets partial credit for knocking on the opened door rather than just coming in. Allison says she and Lydia are going to study, and pulling her aside, he asks her to keep an eye on her bitten, non-werewolf friend.

Busy taking selfies, Lydia is oblivious to all the drama brewing in the Argent household.

Next, the foursome go into the ice rink. Stiles offers a cold Lydia an ugly orange sweater, and she declines due to it clashing with her blue outfit. So, he offers her Reese’s, she accepts, and it’s neither of their faults, but this might be why Peter soon triggers another attack.

He babbles about surprising combinations, and take a hint, Stiles.

She might not remember much about Peter’s attack, but she remembers you confessing your crush before that happened. She wasn’t interested then, she’s not interested now, and I will take the ambiguity the narrative provides to believe you and her never did and never will happen.

I wish Aiden hadn’t died. He’s the only character I’ve ever shipped Lydia with.

Down in the rink, Scott only does a little worse than I would. Of course, I’d firmly hold onto a bar the whole time.

Meanwhile, Lydia is extremely talented, and I wonder if this is Roden, a cleverly disguised stunt double, or some form of CGI. She leads an awestruck, happy Stiles around by the hand, and Allison is adorably teaching Scott how to skate.

She’s mostly failing, but it’s still adorable.

On another note, Posey’s great at comedy here.

Allison and Scott do a photo-booth thingy, and the flash triggers his glowing eyes. There’s one where his eyes are closed, and he gives it to her.

The carefree happiness comes to an end when a hallucination of purple flowers and a screaming Peter buried underneath the ice causes Lydia to scream.

At school, Scott confronts Erica with, “Two’s not enough for Derek. I know he, at least, needs three.”

Literally, he comes up to her locker, and this is the first thing he says. No, ‘Hi,’ no, ‘Can we talk?,’ no, ‘So, you’re a werewolf, now. I’ve only been one for a few months, but if you want to talk, I’m an option.’

Erica vents about how badly others have treated her due to her illness, and Golightly is wonderful here. She really sells the pain, bitterness, anger, and bewilderment Erica has been feeling for so long.

Scott’s response is, “I don’t care.”

This honest. It doesn’t paint a great picture of him, but I do appreciate his honesty.

What I don’t appreciate is his continued anti-werewolf stance. He’s already discarded Erica. When she was human, he could save her without risk to himself, and so, he did. Now, she’s the enemy, too.

Except, she’s not. Derek is later in the season, but right now, Derek isn’t either.

Scott isn’t saving anyone by convincing them not to take the bite. This is all about his grudge against Derek and possibly wanting to remain secretly special in comparison to his classmates.

I’ve said before I don’t like the trope of a character needing to answer the call. Some people have the potential to do great things, and they’d just rather work this normal job, hang out with their friends and family, and enjoy a relatively simple life. I don’t morally condemn anyone, fictional or real, for fitting this.

If Scott’s attitude was, ‘I’m still not joining Derek’s pack, and I don’t want anything to do with anyone associated with him,’ I wouldn’t have a problem. If he were trying to convince the new betas to not trust Derek and help him see if Derek’s up to something, I wouldn’t have a problem. Instead, he’s declaring all new betas his enemy and trying to stop Derek from making anymore under the guise of protecting human life.

I don’t agree with Derek offering the bite to underage teenagers, and there is an argument the four people are all ones he choose due to their susceptibility to emotional coercion, but Derek being wrong doesn’t mean Scott automatically isn’t, too.

After her rant, Erica has Scott physically cornered, and he sees Allison looking at him with another girl so close in his personal space.

Again, Allison is wearing stripes, and more than just Gerard, I think some of the holdover from Kate is at play.

In season 3, before the nogistune literally possesses her is when she finally, fully breaks free of her aunt and grandpa.

At the Argent house a scene that definitely didn’t happen is shown.

Victoria is snooping through Allison’s room under the guise of cleaning. Upon finding the unsigned note Scott left in Allison’s locker, she goes to the kitchen and cuts herself with a large knife.

I believe Victoria straightened up Allison’s room, and I believe she found the note. I believe she was suspicious.

And then, she either called Melissa to schedule a get-together, or she simply showed up at the hospital, ran into her at the grocery store, or even went over to the McCall house when she knew Melissa was home and had a brief conversation with her.

Maybe, it’s possible, at one point Victoria did accidentally hurt herself, and combining that incident with her talking to his mother, he changed the details of injury’s origin.

Victoria wasn’t crazy or unintelligent, and an intelligent, mentally sound hunter wouldn’t physically harm themselves to this degree. In season 3, Allison makes one or two shallow cuts on herself to use human blood as bait, but those cuts weren’t going to stop her or slow her down. Assuming they were cleaned soon after, they would heal quickly and without any lasting physical damage.

This here could have gone wrong. She could have cut too deep or hit a vein or something. If she were suddenly attacked, the injury could well slow her down. Since this injury requires stitches, there’s a possibility Melissa or someone else at the hospital could have determined it was intentionally self-inflicted and pushed for a psychiatric hold.

Also, Victoria is shown to be fashionable and image-conscious. I do believe, if Allison was in physical danger, she’d do whatever she had to in order to save her daughter, possible scars and deformities be damned, but she wouldn’t risk scarring herself just to talk to a woman who lives in the same town as her.

So, yeah, after she left Allison’s room, she either grabbed her phone or grabbed her coat and keys. Eventually, she met Melissa, and they talked.

Onto the conversation that didn’t happen like this but is otherwise accurate.

Before that, though: Melissa has on completely different scrubs than she did earlier in the episode.

Victoria reveals she was a teacher at a private boy’s school for years, and she brings up Scott. Thinking this is a friendly chat, Melissa says he’s acting odd but not heartbroken, and they both agree teenagers are good at hiding things.

Yeah, I really don’t believe Victoria cut herself for this conversation.

At school, Allison and Scott sit back-to-back in the lunch room, despite the fact they were sitting together a few scenes ago.

“I know how it looked, but she came up to me.”

“I’m not jealous,” jealous Allison replies. Focusing more on the betas, she tells him to stay out of things. She knows Derek and Gerard are both drawing battle lines. “There’s always crossfire.”

And she’d know. She’s already been hit due to Kate.

She declares she wants him to be alive, not normal.

Mirrorverse might have happened here. She sat down with a brown paper bag, and then, she left with a tray.

Coming over, Stiles points out Boyd’s empty table.

Stiles knows where Boyd always sat. He tried to con Boyd earlier, but he didn’t try to threaten him. He wasn’t sarcastically mean.

Boyd could have sat with Stiles, but he’s never liked Stiles.

Personally, I have headcanons about Boyd knowing Stiles from after the fallout of Alicia vanishing/dying. He probably liked Sheriff S, but in addition to finding Stiles overwhelming/irritating, he didn’t trust Stiles. Stiles knew vulnerable things about him, and he dreaded the day Stiles told their classmates what he knew.

Back to the duo, Scott orders Stiles to go to Boyd’s house. Scott himself is going to the ice rink.

Stiles tries advising Scott stay out of things. Derek’s giving the betas a choice, and Erica seems to be doing good.

Scott asks how good she’ll look with a wolfs bane bullet in her head, and this might be a decent argument if it hadn’t already been established he’s disregarded Erica. This all about preventing her soulmate from choosing to make a decision Scott disagrees with.

There’s a clear hoyay bait scene at the end where Stiles declares his attraction to Scott and suggests making out.

Over at the Hale house, Jackson has arrived. There’s rain, and when he breaks in, it turns out Chris and the other hunters have firmly taken over Derek’s house.

I don’t think this is brought up when the fly possesses Derek, but it really should have been. First Kate burns the people inside the house to death, and then, Chris steals it.

Jackson does something that keeps him safe but also, it can be argued, contributes to several people being murdered: He doesn’t let Chris know he’s gotten the bite. I’m not sure if Chris would have killed him, or tried to, but he definitely would have had him chained up somewhere.

Chris points out Jackson is smart, good-looking, and captain of the lacrosse team.

“Co-captain,” Jackson grits out.

“Hm,” Chris says. He doesn’t go so far as to say Jackson might soon be sole captain again before he pushes Jackson out into the non-rainy weather.

At Boyd’s house, there are bars on the windows and doors. Erica appears, and she’s correctly notes he’s forcing himself to look only at her eyes rather than thoroughly checking her out.

Yeah, but if Boyd ever finds out he ogled Boyd’s soulmate a second time, then, Boyd will definitely never be his friend.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he offers.

He has a sincere line about her newfound self-confidence, and then, he tries to leave.

Producing a car part, she knocks him out with it.

Either this didn’t happen, or it’s evidence of him being something.

Then, it’s night, and at Deaton’s, he comes in to find Chris has broken in and brought the corpse of the hunter from the pre-credits scene.

At the ice rink, Scott tries to talk to Boyd, but Derek, Isaac, and Erica appear. Erica and Isaac insists they’re happy with being werewolves. Scott trounces Erica and Isaac, Derek wounds Scott, and Boyd reveals the bite on his side. During all this, he says he doesn’t want to eat lunch alone and wants to be like Scott.

Interestingly, Scott can’t comprehend the fact learning about the hunters wouldn’t be enough to get Boyd to refuse.

The thing is, Boyd might have made a good hunter. He’s smart, dedicated, and is cool-headed. He likely has weapons training, and he respects authorithy. The difference is his response to the supernatural isn’t fear and an attempt to contain or destroy it. He understands it’s what supernatural people do, not what they are, that matters.

I’ve read some cultures have mythology about epilepsy and lycanthropy being connected.

Boyd might have gotten on hunter radar somewhere down the line as a possible recruit. Instead, something got him on Derek’s radar. Or maybe, Erica.

Elsewhere, Stiles wakes up in a dumpster with no bruising, bleeding, and/or signs of potential brain trauma.

In the clinic, Scott’s wound isn’t healing, and from nowhere, Deaton announces, “Because, it’s from an alpha.

Then, Scott sees the dead hunter.

“I think we better have that talk, now,” Deaton adds.

Meanwhile, Jackson is practising lacrosse. What I’m assuming is his parents’ truck has rainwater on it. It’s stuck in the mud, and upon seeing his distorted reflection, he’s able to lift it.

I’m not so sure this is part of him being supernatural. Given how emotionally torn he is, it could have been pure adrenaline. The human body shouldn’t be pushed past certain limits, but when a person is in a certain emotional state, they can override the built-in safety measures and cross those limits. A good example is of mothers lifting up cars to get their children.

However, he’s happy.

Fin.


End file.
